New Traveler Tips--Airlines, Car Rentals, Hotels

Before I go too much further into posting of the many trips I have been on, I wanted to touch base on a few things that you need to know about and be aware of as a new traveler, especially if you are a young traveler but especially starting out.

First and foremost is to sign up for every airline's frequent flyer mileage clubs, whether you think you will fly with them or not, do so, as long as it does not cost you anything to do it.

Second, sign up for every rental car agency's frequent renter clubs as well. No matter how expensive their cars are to rent or not, again, so long as it does not cost you anything, then do so.

Third, yes, time for the hotels too. Find a hotel chain that you really like and try to always stay with them as much as you can but still, make sure you are a member of all the hotel frequent stay clubs.

When starting out in life, you want to do this right away, especially if you are just becoming an adult and have not really travelled yet. It's very important as it may not seem like you will ever rack up enough points to gain any benefits but you would be surprised how fast they can accumulate. Sometimes you may get a job that will require you to travel and that's when you want to take full advantage of trying to stay as much as possible at the same chain and rent from the same car rental company and fly the same airlines.

Some good ones that we have used:

Airlines
Southwest--They have an excellent frequent flyer mileage club and you can get free flights easily! The further in advance you schedule your trip, the less points it costs. The only fee you would pay would be the tax and it's normally $5.00 a leg. (A leg is from one point to another) They will also send you free drink coupons in the mail and send offers if you want to see them for various trips. Their site is also one of the best and easiest to look to see how much it might cost for hotel and car rentals. Definitely the most user friendly!

American Airlines--They also have a great frequent flyer mileage club but they are more difficult to earn free flights, however, they DO go overseas.

United Airlines--Good program but still hard to accumulate enough points for free trips.

Each airline will also have other incentives and ways to earn those mileage points and some of them are to apply for one of their credit cards. Be forewarned here as I will be talking about credit cards as well, they usually have annual fees just to have the card and a high interest rate.
I'll go over credit cards here in another post.


Car Rental Agencies
Dollar, Budget, Enterprise, National and other local car rental companies, are going to normally be your cheaper ones. Each one has a nice program to where you can earn points and you can also get emails for specials they are running or coupons for free upgrades, etc etc. And yes, you can earn enough for free car rental days and just pay the taxes.

Hertz is probably one of the more expensive but they are also have very nice cars and take care of their frequent customers with class A service. The others will too, but you can tell Hertz is just one of the bigger and more expensive companies.

Most of these car rental places will try to sell you the insurance and it really jacks up the price. This is one of those damned if you do and damned if you don't type of deals because you never know when you might get into a car accident or some fool hits you and it's not even your fault. Many of your own personal car insurance policies do not cover the rental cars so you have to really make sure they do and how much and know what is and isn't covered before you roll the dice and take your chances.
Also, they will try to have you rent a GPS so it's best to have your own handy and they are cheap enough these days with a lot of great features and becoming familiar with it, you can personalize it and make it your own and save special places.


Hotels
Find one that isn't too terribly expensive and yet offers nice upgrades. We really enjoy the Holiday Inn chain. The hotels are clean and nice and many include continental breakfast and as you stay with them more often, they do offer points for free night stays  and they have many specials for bonus point opportunities throughout the year. Once you become a member of the Priority Club, many times when you check in, the front desk will have a special welcoming goodie bag with water, crackers or special coupons for thanking you for checking in with their hotel. Not all of them will do this, but it's nice when they do. They also at times, will upgrade you for free up to a nicer room or even an executive suite! One hotel we stayed at in FL, upgraded us up to the Executive level where we had are our own special area for breakfast in the morning and every night at 10pm, they would bring up fresh out of oven baked cookies and cold milk!! Talk about spoiling you to death!! You had to have a special key to get up to that level of the hotel too! Holiday Inn owns several different named hotels and some suite hotels such as Staybridge and if you stay there, its like a mini apartment! They are just gorgeous and come with a complete kitchen and washer/dryer, big screen tv, Jacuzzi tub...the works!
What else is nice is that when you accumulate so many points, you can actually book some nights for your friends to use as they don't normally require you as the member, to be the one to check in.


Hilton is another that has frequent stay programs but they are very picky about who can use the free nights and only allow the member to be the one to check in. It's harder to get the free nights as well.

Best Western is another hotel similar to the Holiday Inn and their hotels are fairly nice.

I have also stayed at the Ramada but I am not too familiar with their frequent stay programs.



Sometimes this information seems to be one of those lost, unspoken secrets because yes, it CAN be free! :)  Because of our jobs, we have been able to get a lot of points and used them for free trips to Vegas, FL and even overseas and just paying for the taxes. Also free rental cars and so many hotel stays it's not funny!

So why would they do this? To reward you for your loyalty with that particular company. You could choose any different company but you chose theirs and if your stay or flight or rental is so great, you are going to recommend them to your friends, word of mouth can be a powerful advertisement!

Don't forget, sign up with them all! :) You just never know!

Ocean City, MD --July/August 2011

Normally, at this time of the year, my family and I head off to the Jersey shore for our summertime vacation. We fly into Philly and rent a car, go to see family in PA and then drive on over to the shore and stay there for a couple of nights and then drive down to Delaware to see my uncle and stay with him for a few days and then drive on back up to Philly to fly home.

Last year, my favorite place in Jersey was packed full of people! It was a madhouse! It seems that the show, Jersey Shore was filming there! YIKES! It also seemed that so many foreigners were hired in the shops and stands instead of the local Jersey kids that I was used to seeing. I had noticed this trend over the years, so many exchange students or young people from Russia and other countries coming over to work the stands and shops during the summer. It was a bit disheartening to see as I missed the Jersey guys calling out to us as we'd pass the stands to try to get our attention to come on over to play their game of chance to possibly win this prize or that.

But yikes! Jersey Shore....as we had walked down the boardwalk too, they had Snookie and some other girl on the shore walking in front of us as they were filming while we were there. It was hard to see my favorite childhood spot infiltrated by the media and mobbed with people.

So this year, we decided to take a break from the shore and spend our time at Ocean City, MD. We had noticed that along the main strip were a ton of miniature golf courses! We have not played putt-putt as some call it, for a long time!

We flew Southwest on free tickets that were saved up and stayed at the Holiday Inn right on the beach, also using points too that were saved. We didn't really have a good plan like we were used to doing with the NJ jaunt but we had a really great time!

The hotel itself is right on the beach and the water was nice. Temperatures were really great although there was not much of a challenge for waves. I didn't get to see it at low tide at all but the water felt great. One of the only things I didn't like was that there was a live band that played the same beat over and over again one night. It was a bit obnoxious.

We got to play about 4 different miniature golfs and had a blast tho' we found out if you are going to go play them there, be sure and go before 5 pm because after that time, you pay a much higher rate as most people will play at that time or later so that they are not burning under the heat of the sun.

There were lots of little souvenir beach and surf shops, many were the same and tons of Candy Kitchen stores! WOW! Of course Dunkin Donuts were scattered all over too.


We met up with my uncle and ate with him a few times at a few places like Seacrets which is a wonderful restaurant on the bay side. The owner transplants palm trees every year and the whole
 
 

floor of the place is the sandy beach. One section has tables right in the water that you can sit at and have your feet in there. Several bars and dance floors, it's just a really fun, fun place to go!

 

Of course we had to go into the arcade and I had to play the coin slide games that I am really good at. I ended up winning enough points to get some great Halloween props! Take a peek over at my Halloween blog: Under the Crooked Hat and you can see the pics of all that I got! It was great fun! We went on the Haunted House ride and enjoyed shopping along the stores on the boardwalk.

Ocean City was a great alternative to the Jersey shore. Having the beach right on the beach itself was really bonus but I still missed Seaside.